an amazing video Chris Cairns shot and edited of the automated interactive antique grumpy typewriter that me and Neil built last year!
Ghostwriter by Neil Mendoza and Anthony Goh from Neil Mendoza on Vimeo.
Entries Tagged as 'art'
ghostwriter video
February 21st, 2012 · No Comments · art, portfolio
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some paintings
July 2nd, 2011 · No Comments · art, portfolio
Been doing some paintings recently in the sunshine! Aerosols on paper and cardboard.
plum blossoms, 60cm x 120cm
fish 7, 150cm x 120cm
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impossible fireflies
June 27th, 2011 · No Comments · art, portfolio
This is a thermoelectric lantern using energy from one tea-light candle to power 6 high brightness LED fireflies who cluster round the flame. The combined light output of the LEDs is about 100 times more than the light output of the candle.
It’s constructed using a chip from an old 12v fridge, which normally uses electricity to create a temperature difference across its two faces. In a fridge, one side of this chip is kept at room temperature, and therefore the other side becomes colder.
In this project, we run this effect in reverse, heating one side of the chip with a candle, and allowing the other side to cool with a heatsink from an old Dell computer. So we generate small voltage which we then amplify to power the LEDs.
The lamp is made from an antique Chinese-made oil lamp. The oil fill valve on the back of the lamp has been converted into the control switch with 3 modes – FIREFLIES – OFF – HI-BEAM.
solar powered LED underwater graffiti creatures
June 20th, 2011 · No Comments · art, london
slug1, somewhere in East London, Anthony Goh, 2011
slug1, somewhere in East London, Anthony Goh, 2011
jellyfish1, somewhere in East London, Anthony Goh, 2011
jellyfish1, somewhere in East London, Anthony Goh, 2011
EDIT: if you like this project, please consider voting for it in an instructables contest! If I win, I will auction the prize (an iPad) and give half the money to a marine charity which reduces the (obscene) amount of plastic junk in our water systems. YOu should also check out the other projects in the contest, some of them are insanely good.
Vote here at the Instructables 2011 LED Contest
LED graffiti has been around for a while, most notably LED Throwies and signage using LEDs to spell words. One problems is power supply – after the batteries expire, LED graffiti becomes simply more junk.
Solar panels used to be prohibitively expensive for novelty projects, but as solar powered LED garden lights have exploded in popularity so their price has plummeted. They are currently flooding the eco-system of consumer electronics at the cheap, destined-to-be-junk level , and you can find boxes and boxes of them at any car boot sale.
Solar garden lights (normally used to adorn a path) are simple devices which use solar panels to charge a rechargeable battery in the day, then they automatically switch an LED on at night. Since they are now very cheap, and are even often thrown away, so we can use these to create self-powering (immortal!) glowing pieces which can happily live in the wild.
After thinking about places for an installation – somewhere interesting, beautiful, that wouldn’t get disturbed – I settled on underwater.
So, inspired by nature, this art project re-creates beautiful, mysterious, bio-luminescent creatures from the deep sea in your urban canal, pond or river environment. In the initial test phase of this project, I built 2 creatures, one based loosely on a jellyfish and the other on a sea slug.
To find out more about the making of this project, check out the step-by-step guide on Instructables
the device is built from fibre optic LED garden lights, glued to a frame. the control box with solar panel floats in the water above the creature
3 solar panels are glued together. these float onthe surface, and the battery pack and electronics hang below in the water. The rim is made from an LED rope necklance and the guts from re-cycled plastic and a flashing RGB LED.
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The Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race 2011
March 31st, 2011 · No Comments · abelha cachaca, art, london, nature
So, the dust has settled on another Goat Race, and we are happy to announce that about £6300 has been raised for the farm, a huge increase on the £3400 from last year! So thanks to everyone who came, everyone who worked there, especially those who volunteered their time, and to the farm staff.
Exciting new additions this year included the Oxford & Cambridge Stoat Race, food, coffee, beer from Meantime Brewery and cocktails from Abelha Cachaca.
Music from the excellent DJ Pigsnoots, and live freestyle MC’ing from the excellent Voodoo Browne, whose single, Low Budget Raver drops this April.
This year, we had more time to put into making lots more decorations and bits & bobs for the farm which was nice.
Bramble the Golden Guernsey romped home for Cambridge in 57 seconds as Oxford never recovered from stopping at the start of the race to do a poo.
From a personal point of view, I think it’s really important to connect people to city farms – they do an important thing of not letting us forget ultimately what life is about - which is easy to do in cities. So I was happy to see thousands of smiling people walking around the farm, taking it all in. Many will have been to Brick Lane and Shoreditch tens of times and never known about the farm just a street away.
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urban henge v1: equinox
March 23rd, 2011 · No Comments · art, portfolio
The movement of the Sun, Moon and Earth create the most fundamental rhythms for life on Earth. In modern city life, we live to different, man-made rhythms – the weekend, Christmas, or the last friday (payday!) of an arbitrary, non-lunar month. It’s even difficult to find natural calendars – city lights mean that the effect of the moon’s light is often unnoticed, light pollution blocks stars, and our line of sight to horizons is often blocked by the city skyline.
Urban henge v1: Equinox is a street art version of a neolithic calender which indicates the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox from the Sun’s position. A small discreet mirror is positioned so that at precisely 12:00 noon on each equinox, and on only these 2 special days, the sun is reflected exactly onto the trilithon (stones).
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temporosaurus: recycled pallet dinosaur fire sculpture
February 12th, 2011 · No Comments · art, portfolio
“temporosaurus” by Anthony Goh, 2011, 2.5m x 1.5m x 2.5m high, discarded pallets
Temporosaurus is constructed from unwanted forklift pallets. These pallets are temporarily rearranged to give life to a creature of myth – a tyrannosaur – whose purpose is to be ritually burned. From the audience perspective, the fire marks the start of the creature’s life, but as soon as it is lit and becomes alive, it is also simultaneously dying as the flames consume it. So it illustrates that to die beautifully whilst giving warmth and light to others is also to live fully.
Photography by Lucy Tanner
happy christmas 2010
December 24th, 2010 · No Comments · art, london
Nice festive piece of art somewhere in East London
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Escape [Mobile Phone Birds pics and video]
September 29th, 2010 · No Comments · art, london, portfolio
Some pics and video of our installation down at the V&A, also read about it at Not-fig and Creative Applications
Escape by Anthony Goh and Neil Mendoza from Neil Mendoza on Vimeo.
Birds [Objects] by Neil Mendoza from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.
Tags:art·birds·installation·mobile phones·tree·V&A
London Design Festival: Digital Design Weekend at the V&A on 25th & 26th September
September 24th, 2010 · No Comments · art, london, portfolio
UPDATE: see pics and vids of the installation in action here
This weekend at the V&A, there are a bunch of workshops, events, art and joining-in stuff that celebrate digital art and design. Me and Neil will be there all day Saturday and Sunday with some robotic birds constructed out of mobile phones so pop down and say hi if you’re around. We will be talking to anyone who listens about microcontrollers and hardware hacking(!) aka the language of love.
Mobile phone birds in construction phase
It’s all free. Other highlights include light graffiti workshops, Hidden V&A iPod tours, and toy hacking. Full programme here:
Digital Design Weekend at the V&A on 25&26th September
Tags:art·mobile phone birds·V&A
Haunted Typewriter interviewed on BBC R4
September 19th, 2010 · No Comments · art, thoughts
Me and Neil’s bizarre 90year old robotic typewriter lovechild was very briefly “interviewed” on BBC R4 on Saturday. Here’s the direct link to iPlayer:
Haunted Typewriter interviewed on BBC R4
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Haunted Typewriter exhibiting at Unleashed Devices show
September 13th, 2010 · No Comments · art, portfolio
Me and Neil have been working hard in the shed for a couple of weeks building a Haunted Typewriter. It’s a 90 year old typewriter which we have painstakingly totally automated, brought to life and given senses and personality, via a microcontroller, 30 odd actuators, and an aggravatingly large number of wires and little bits of metal.
It uses sensors to react to people who approach it or look at it and most of the time it is a fairly grumpy and misanthropic machine. You can see a vid of it in action here, in the final testing phases:
Haunted Typewriter typing from anthony goh on Vimeo.
Haunted Typewriter close up from anthony goh on Vimeo.
It’s part of an exhibition called Unleashed Devices at a gallery called Watermans, down in SW London, and the private view is this Tuesday the 14th September 2010.
From the Guardian write up:
“Unleashed Devices brings together students, hackers, designers and artists in an unusual exhibition of interactive sculptures, modified electronic toys and other hacked, mashed and open source works… The projects combine artistic communication with science and technology, robotics, computer vision, physical modelling and psychedelic manipulation techniques…”
There are some really nice pieces of work there, one of my favourites is a sundial that points itself towards any source of light, hence always telling the right time with its shadow. Exhibition catalogue is here.
We have almost electrocuted ourselves, set fire to a lot of things,
and fried many electronic components during the build, and it would be
good to see any of you for a drink (freebies) at the private view. Email me or call me if you’re thinking of coming down.
Haunted Typewriter at Unleashed Devices
Watermans 40 High Street Brentford TW8 0DS
1 September – 22 October 2010
12pm – 9pm daily.
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thermoelectric LED butterflies lamp
April 28th, 2010 · No Comments · art, nature, portfolio
This is a lamp made from scavenged parts which uses heat from one candle to generate electricity to power 6 ultra-bright LED butterflies. It’s a designed for someone who lives off-grid, so it can provide a bright white light source off just one tea-light. It uses the heatsink from an old Dell computer, and a thing called a peltier chip (converts heat into electricity) taken from a 12V fridge.
I was inspired by the amazing instructable from reukpower, and have made a few refinements to the way it all fits together. Pretty happy with it. The most cool thing about it is that the light from the LEDs is really really bright – much brighter than the light of the candle. Spooky huh?
close up of the butterfly – cut from a plastic bottle and painted
One thing that particularly pleased me is that it’s made from hardly any new parts. I only had to buy a transistor and some heat conducting paste.
you can see the circuitry underneath – it’s a circuit known as a joule thief, which sort of transforms the voltage from the peltier chip into something that can run the high-brightness LEDs
inside the tin cans – loft insulation surrounds the peltier chip (the white square)
the finished lamp/mobile
Tags:butterflies·eco·electricity·lamp·LED
Billie Jean LED Shoes
February 21st, 2010 · 1 Comment · art, fancy dress, portfolio
These are shoes attached to LED floor tiles, equipped with a pressure switch so that they light up when you step, just like the Michael Jackson Billie Jean video.
I had this project lying half-built around for ages, but lacked the will to finish it, as I went through this phase of being unable to do any fancy dress without getting a giant sinking empty feeling inside. In the end I’m glad I finished it, it’s one of the best outfits I have ever made. They are much fun/funnier that I thought they would be – people just start dancing around you.
My new thing for projects is trying to make them from as little newly purchased stuff as possible. For this project I had to buy the polycarbonate (£10), the LEDs (cheap – about £5) and the electronics (about another £5), but the shoes and wood are scraps/charity shop.
In the future I will modify them so that they have a “flash on and off” mode as well as pressure mode.
For those who are into it, you can see how they work on Flickr
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engraving things
February 1st, 2010 · No Comments · art
Last year, when we built that multi-touch installation in the Science Museum, I relented and got a Dremel Multi-Tool. I had always thought these were a tool for dads to buy off the advert and never use, or a bit of a toy that doesn’t do any job particularly well. But it turns out that for little, crafty things, which I do quite a lot, they are excellent.
The magical Abelha putter
I especially like using it to engrave things. You can make any dull, manufactured object unique and special just by engraving it, and I also feel it imbues objects with personality and magical powers. I find it quite difficult, but am getting slowly better.
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video of our RFID art thing in action at the Science Museum
May 27th, 2009 · No Comments · art, portfolio
So I now have video from Neil of our installation in action. It’s built on our home made multi-touch screen, which allows users to paint or draw using their hands or an empty brush.
The idea is that users copy a picture and submit it. The software then creates an composite image based on all the submitted user images. As more and more people submit images, the composite image starts to look more and more like the actual image.
It’s based on the idea of the Wisdom of Crowds – a theory which basically states than in the right conditions, the averaged guess of a crowd will consistently beat any single expert’s guesses. An example of this is sports odds – the odds (which are formed by a huge number of people all guessing and hedging) are a more accurate predictor than any single expert, over time.
Sum of its pArts from Apex on Vimeo.
There’s also a write up and video of the Takeaway Festival 2009 here at Jotta, an online community arts portfolio site.
I really enjoyed working on this. it’s the first bit of interactive art, or in fact any art I have done. I was mostly surprised at how possible it is to build devices that on the outset seem impenetrably complex, and has given me loads of ideas for the future.
Here’s the posh write up of it.
Sum of its Parts
Brief Synopsis
The Sum of its Parts is an experiment in collaborative art. Over the course of an exhibition, participants take turns to reproduce iconic pieces of art. After each interpretation, the average colour is calculated for each pixel to produce the current collaborative work. This installation was exhibited at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre in May 2009.
User Experience
In it’s rest state, the installation cycles through the original pieces of art. Next to the original, the participants’ interpretations are shown being composited together. Once the composite reaches its current state, it pauses briefly before the next original is shown. Participants are instructed to touch the screen to begin. On touching the screen, they are presented with a selection of four works they can reproduce. They select one of the works by touching it at which point it grows to fill the whole screen. On touching the screen it fades away to leave a blank canvas the same colour as the background of the original. There is a menu that allows participants to see the original again, show a palette or submit their painting. After using their hands or a brush to interpret the original and selecting to submit, they see their painting becoming part of the collaborative work. The installation then returns to its rest state.
Tech Spec
Hardware
1 x Laptop running installation software
1 x Multitouch Table Sending TUIO signals over OSC
Multitouch setup for the installation at the Science Museum consisted of:
4 x 780nm 25mw laser
4 x 90 degree line splitter
1 x Unibrain Fire-I Monochrome Webcam
1 x IR Filter
1 x 150cm x 113cm sheet of Perspex
1 x Projector
1 x Sheet of drafting film for back projection
Software
The software for the installation is written in Java. The blob tracking was done using Tbeta.
Tags:multitouch·rfid·science museum
takeaway festival opening night tuesday 19th may 2009
May 13th, 2009 · 2 Comments · art, london, portfolio
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working with Neil and Simeon, building a giant collaborative art touch screen thing. It involves lasers, loads of wood, and cameras, and it’s been a nightmare to build so far. I have almost cut all my fingers off numerous times and accidentally shot myself in the eyes with high power infra-red lasers.
This is all for the Takeaway Festival – a fusion of technology, music and art – happening at the Dana Centre, SW London over a couple of weeks starting Tuesday the 19th May. It’s without a doubt the nerdiest thing I have ever been a part of, but it feels good.
I would love if it you came down to the Tuesday opening night (they have beer), or if you can’t make it, you can see our installation anytime after that for a couple of weeks. See the details below.
Here’s a picture of us prototyping the device.
Takeaway Festival Schedule
The Festival opens Tuesday May 19th with our first day of workshops and our Opening Evening 7.00-9.30
- The Exhibits and Interactives are open from Tuesday May 19th until Saturday May 30th
- Entrance is Free
- Exhibition finishes on Saturday May 30th 15:00
- Please note: The exhibition is also open on Monday 25th May (Bank Holiday)
Opening times: Monday to Friday 10:00 – 17:00
Saturday 23rd May 12:00 – 17:00
Saturday 30th May 12:00 – 15:00
For workshops and evening events you will need to book in advance so please call 020 7942 4040 or e-mail tickets@danacentre.org.uk
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london metropolitan police ads: remixes
March 30th, 2009 · No Comments · advertising, art, thoughts
I am generally a very unpolitical person, but I strongly believe that this ridiculous fear-mongering ad campaign from the Met Police is a really bad thing for society. It’s just daft and harmful. So I thought I would post these remixes, from a Boingboing remix competition. Who is the ad agency responsible for these originals?
Photo from Antony Bennison
Photo from Timbearcub
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recycled junk jewellery: tower hamlets safety glass earrings
June 1st, 2008 · No Comments · art, portfolio
I’ve just started doing evening classes once a week in silversmithing and jewellery making at the community college in Bethnal Green, just for fun.
I plan to make a series of 13 pieces of jewellery – one representing each Inner City Borough of London, using items I find on the floor in each Borough.
The first piece is these Sterling Silver earrings made from chips of car glass from an accident next to a bus stop on Grove Road, Bow, Tower Hamlets, London.
It was my first time trying to use silver wire like this. I was hungover as hell, and they took about 2 hours to make, but if I did them again, it would would take much less time. Pretty pleased with the result, the safety glass really blings well – much brighter than I thought it would be.
These ones aren’t for sale, but I could make a new pair if you want, or even something different. Any ideas for the next pieces also welcome.
PS
I found the silversmithing course via the Tower Hamlets Learning Ladder scheme which is brilliant, has a range of courses in all kinds of different stuff, from cooking to languages, and cheap too – a 10 week course is £85, compared to fees of £400+ for doing it at a name like St Martins.
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